


and baby, heaven's in your eyes

by papyrocrat



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:04:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not her first stop after she turns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and baby, heaven's in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> drug use, compulsion

Her first stop after she turns is to look in on Alaric, to watch him squeeze a fist around his ring until his finger turns purple. Then she slips into her office for...nothing anyone would miss. Her favorite earrings, a backup of her research, a pocketful of wolfsbane.

She won't quite let herself run out of excuses that push him to the bottom of her list - her last stop before Thailand will be the end seat of the third row of some dusty old bleachers which haven't changed since well before the early nineties - but she knows she won't not go, just as surely as she knows he won't turn her away.

His apartment tells a flavorless tale of impersonal success, with western-facing windows reaching up to a high ceiling and just enough furniture of a dark mahogany set. _God, this could have been my life,_ she thinks, and only manages to avoid a sigh of relief by virtue of not needing to breathe.

He hands her a glass of bourbon. He's not hostile, but not kind. "What's going on, Isobel?"

Everything. Also, nothing, ever again.

"John, do you love me?"

"I did," he says.

*

She stays in Thailand exactly as long as expected and avoids getting too restless on the Orient Express. She sees Cairo and Johannesburg, and savors the ability to stay room temperature through every month and climate.

Still, she finds herself back in Nashville, rapping her knuckles on a door that hasn't changed. She's only slightly paler than him; he's only a little more alive than her.

He's learned his way around women since they were kids. She doesn't know what she expected, and she'll never need anything again, but this is something she's almost capable of wanting.

"Do you love me?"

"Of course," he says dully.

That's not their agreement, the frosty accord they reached when he let her into this dark, dustless room.

She should let him remember this time. _Make_ him remember. Just out of spite.

He does another line before prying his eyes away from the coffee table. "Are you _done here?_ "

 _That shit'll kill you,_ she almost says. But that's not their agreement either, so she just nods. "Just a tip from an old friend," she does say as she collects her bra from his floor and her image from his brain. "Lay off the cheap stuff."

"Good idea," he scoffs. "Show yourself out."

*

"John, do you love me?"

He runs a thumb across her temple, over the veins that are always hard and tight just beneath her skin, and then down to her open mouth, taking her in with his eyes and his touch.

"Not like this."

"Pretty ballsy for you." _Even_ for you, she thinks, he's always been as hard as ice. As hard, and as unrelentingly, stickily cold. "I could kill you so easily, you know."

He twists up a shrug and curls out a sneer, and means them both. "I don't give a _fuck_ what you do."

"Good." She nods as she takes it all back. "That's good."

*

He doesn't know about their embarrassing little habit and wouldn't know when to expect her if he did. Still, she keeps coming, until she knows every surface of his place by how it feels against her back. She supposes it was just a matter of time until she spent a Sunday morning in his bed.

She wanders over to his bookshelf, then decides she might as well go for broke.

"John, do you love me?"

He rolls his eyes and reaches for his Blackberry.

"Answer me, John." She has forever, but he doesn't. She walks back across the room and straddles his legs, cool Egyptian cotton chafing her thighs, and leans into his gaze. He looks back at her, all breakable and blue. "Tell me the truth, John."

"I've grown inoculated to your charms, Isobel."

She pushes harder, leans smack into an unfamiliar kind of harshness. "Are you on vervain?"

"Sure," he says. "Or I just don't give a shit."

She almost cares which it is.

*

She leaves him alone after that, until she hears that Damon Salvatore has gone back home to Mystic Falls.

He buzzes her into the building for the pleasure of slamming his door in her face.

An older couple walk past from the elevator. She drops her eyes at the carpet and simpers as they pass, and relishes that she can still make his neighbors judge him a little harder than her before she knocks again.

"Trick or treat, John."

"What do you want?"

"What's the condo board's policy on doors getting ripped off their hinges?"

He swings the door wide open, pressing one hand against either side of the door frame. "Entirely too lenient, I've always said."

"It's good to see you, John." She could make him believe her, but she'd rather have his hate than glassy-eyed obedience. "We need to talk about Elena."

He lets her in.

**Author's Note:**

> [prompted by lynzie914, tell me I'm your National Anthem,](http://lynzie914.livejournal.com/59923.html?thread=500755#t500755) title from the song by Lana Del Ray


End file.
